If you know about SLIFT, there’s a good chance that you discovered them through their KEXP session, or the stunning Levitation Session filmed beneath towering Tesla coils.
The Toulouse trio have spent the past few years building a reputation as one of the most exciting live bands in modern psychedelic rock. Their sound combines heaviness, hypnotic repetition and a remarkable ability to make even their most expansive music feel immediate.
With Fantasia, SLIFT have managed to capture on record what makes them such a powerful live band. And it happened right here at DAFT, where we spent weeks hearing guitars, effects and endless layers of sound pouring out of the studios. Three musicians in the same room, playing together, searching, experimenting and building an album that’s as beautiful as it is heavy.
The record has since earned widespread praise, with Metal Hammer calling it one of SLIFT’s strongest works to date and ranking it No. 1 in their Albums of the Year list.
Read Metal Hammer’s review of Fantasia
How they found their sound at DAFT
2026 marks ten years of SLIFT. By the time they arrived at DAFT, the trio had already spent months working on these songs in their rehearsal space near Toulouse, refining ideas, reshaping arrangements and pushing themselves away from old habits. The songs were ready, but still alive enough to evolve once the recording started.
That way of working shaped the entire recording process. Rather than building the album piece by piece, the band recorded together in our large live room, keeping the direct connection that has always been at the heart of their sound. The sessions were engineered by Joel Workman and assisted by Léo Coussy, with a setup designed around the band’s natural way of playing. Because the material had been rehearsed so extensively beforehand, many of the performances that ended up on the record were captured in a single take.
The live room itself became part of the album. SLIFT’s music needs space. Space for the volume, the dynamics and the constant movement between moments of tension and release. The room allowed the band to play at full intensity while preserving the detail and depth that run through the record. Much of the sound was shaped in real time, using DAFT’s collection of microphones, amplifiers and instruments rather than relying on heavy processing later on.
You can hear it throughout Fantasia. Canek Flores’ drums hit hard while remaining clear and precise. Rémi Fossat’s bass anchors the music without ever getting lost. Jean Fossat’s guitars stretch across the stereo field, from delicate textures to walls of sound. The album’s lead single, The Day Of Execution, offers a perfect glimpse into that chemistry.
While the album was later mixed by Kurt Ballou in Salem, Massachusetts, and mastered by Magnus Lindberg, the final record stays remarkably close to what was happening in the room at DAFT. The core of the sound is still the performances, the space, and the choices made while tracking.
The result is a record that feels wide and immersive without ever tipping into over-production. Even with its dense arrangements and psychedelic layers, Fantasia keeps a strong sense of movement, and you can still feel the musicians locked in together throughout.
Finding inspiration in the setting
For a band like SLIFT, whose music often leans into cosmic and science-fiction imagery, the setting felt unusually fitting. Jean Fossat has mentioned the planetary exploration video game Outer Wilds as one of the inspirations behind parts of the album’s visual world. In its own way, DAFT offers a similar sensation: stepping out of everyday life and into a self-contained space built entirely for sound and focus. Many artists describe it as being in a bubble. We sometimes think of it more as a kind of sound spaceship that happened to land in the middle of the Ardennes.
Listening back to Fantasia today, what stands out most is how much of the original session is still there. The mix and mastering added depth and polish, but the core of the record was already in the room: three musicians playing together, captured in a space large enough to let everything breathe. That’s what gives Fantasia its energy, and why it still feels so immediate despite its scale.
→ Explore the microphones, instruments and backline available at DAFT Studios
